Campus Co-Lab and sustainability

What is Campus Co-Lab?

Campus Co-Lab is a place and a process that students and staff can use to bring and implement their ideas to enhance the student experience on the Wellington Campus. We work with both students and staff to bring their ideas to life.

Each project has an assigned facilitator, who guides project leaders and collaborators through the idea development process using human-centred design principles which focus on the needs of the user, iterative development and starting with affordable small-scale trials.

Campus Co-Lab has a philosophy of equality and inclusiveness between project collaborators who come from a mixture of academic, professional, student and staff backgrounds.

Below is a list of Campus Co-Lab projects which have a sustainability component to them. If you are interested in knowing more please contact Marie Larking and Mags Chalecka-Harris, who co-manage Campus Co-Lab.

Bikes at Massey

Aim: To create a shared bike system based at Massey for students and staff to use to get around the city.

The team has learned about UCSA’s bike sharing model, looked into Wellington City Council’s plans for bike sharing schemes, and talked to Next bike (bike sharing system large scale) to see if such model would work for our campus. The initial survey validated the need and desire for bikes on campus.

Before the team invests in bike for the campus, the team is researching into how, when and what the bikes will be used for, via a google form to get students and staff to trace their hypothetical bike usage.

Uni Shuttle

Aim: To provide a service for students who study late at night on campus to get home safely.

Many students on the Massey University Campus may find themselves studying on campus late into the night to make use of the facilities on offer, such as the library or the design studios. Students can be on campus till 11pm (Library’s closing hours) or even up to 12pm or 2am if students are in one of the design blocks. Late at night the campus becomes dark and very empty. Security are around, but Massey offers not much in the way of actively getting students safely home.

This project is exploring if a shuttle or a carpooling service will be a viable option to transport students off campus to either their flats or suburb. The project’s main concern is looking at students’ safety and how the University could support these late studiers.

Massey Fruit and Vege Co-Op

Aim: Give students and staff access to affordable, local fresh fruit and vegetables from their campus.

Food co-ops are a great way to support communities and get affordable, fresh fruit and vegetable into people’s hands. Students are often living on tight budgets and the co-op gives them a way to access easily an affordable food options. This initiative is also available to staff, as without the staff the co-op wouldn’t be sustainable in the months where the number of students significantly decrease.

Wā Collective

Aim: To give tertiary students access to free or subsided menstrual products.

The subsided menstrual products purchased from Wā are sponsored by sustainable and ethical New Zealand companies. The Wā team wants to break down the taboo of menstruation and have done this by making sure all their copy is gender inclusive, not specifying that this service is just for woman, but a service for all students who menstruate.

Wā Collective officially launched their service in May 2017 with a trial selling 100 menstrual cups. Going ahead with their plans to offer menstrual cups at the subsidised price of $12.50 to both Massey and Victoria University students, the response has been 100% positive with orders flowing in. Profits made by Wā Collective go right back into purchasing more stock, providing education and supporting students in extreme hardship.

Keep Cups #nothrow

Aim: To reduce the amount of disposable cups consumed by Tussock’s customers on Massey’s Campus.

Disposable cups have become a luxury that comes with our daily cup of coffee. On the Massey University campus Tussock ordered 100,000 takeaway cups last year alone. Staff and students had no alternative! The Keep Cup team at Campus Co-Lab aim to change that. By sourcing keep cups for Tussock to sell and exploring ways to enhance the reusable culture on campus, steps are being taken to reduce the use of disposable cups.

Tussock Café is now selling Keep Cups and “No Throw” is recruiting a new team to launch phase 2 which will look at a reducing the number of takeaway cups we use to 0 and developing student-designed collectible keep cups.

Community Gardens (new project yet to be initiated)

Aim: Explore how a campus community garden could work around the needs and availability of our students.

Time and time again students asked for a space on campus to grow vegetables and herbs. This project is to explore the logistics around how a community garden on campus would work and if the students of Massey would nurture a garden to feed all students.